


do you trace the steps he walks back to you?

by switmikan74



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Akaashi loves Bokuto so much, Angst, Bokuto left Akaashi, Hope is disgusting, I am sorry I had to write this one, M/M, No Beta, We Die Like Men, ten years relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23962264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/switmikan74/pseuds/switmikan74
Summary: Bokuto has the tendency to suddenly disappear. Yet, Akaashi would always, always wait for him.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji & Bokuto Koutarou, Akaashi Keiji & Kozume Kenma, Akaashi Keiji & Kuroo Tetsurou, Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	do you trace the steps he walks back to you?

**Author's Note:**

> This is pure angst, I guess. I apologize for the mistakes made. And I apologize that I can't, for the life of me, just write something fluffy.

* * *

“You can plan for a change in weather and time  
But I never planned on you changing your mind”

* * *

_He writhes in an uncomfortable way. His chest heaving as he runs after the fading back of his lover. He apologized. He begged. He would shoulder all the faults. Anything. Anything. So he will just stay._

* * *

This is how his morning begins.

There is a rustling of sheets beside him, a gentle arm slung the side of his body, a bright voice excitedly whispering the dreams he could remember. There is a warmth pressed tightly against him, long calloused fingers tracing the side of his face before gentle kisses were peppered across.

He blinks groggily—a sluggish action underappreciated by most. But there is a soft sounding gasp like he just witnessed something beautiful. He is drawn still in the lulling call of slumber, eyes unsteadily surveying his surrounding before choosing to remain asleep.

There is a boisterous laugh trying to invade his numb senses. Subconsciously, his lips form a frown, an arm swatting the persistent lips pressing on his face.

“’Kaashi!” The voice was familiar. He almost smiles. He hadn’t heard it for over a year and a half now. “’Kaashi, wake up. We’re going to eat breakfast. I prepared it, ya know!”

One eye cracks open, lazy stare following the source of the voice. He sees grey hair mixed with black ones, clear golden eyes peering, lips curve up in a sheepish grin. His arms almost reflexively pull the person into an embrace. Yet, he settled with a blank stare. He pinpricks his finger subtly as to not alarm his sudden companion. Gone is the mystery of the bedroom intruder. Privately, Akaashi thinks it was still an illusion.

But here he is. His mind reels with the onslaught thumping of his heart, eyes prickly with tears even with the blankness of his expression. It’s only Bokuto, he tries to appease every fiber of his being. It’s only Bokuto.

He is encaged in a suffocating, fiery hug that pushes him on the edge.

“Let’s go down. Breakfast is ready.”

* * *

_Bokuto used to only have thirty-seven weaknesses. In their shared youth, Akaashi had memorized every single thing that make up the identity of their ace. And when things were changing, even when Bokuto’s weaknesses kept on accumulating in spades, Akaashi has stood firmly beside him._

_He likes to think that he is the source of Bokuto’s strength—something that grounded him. So, it took everything from him to not wilt away when Bokuto decided that he had enough of their relationship._

_Weakness number fifty-nine: fear of the stagnant._

* * *

The autumn air was unusually warm. Or perhaps, it has to do with Bokuto’s return. He has no idea what day it is, he has lost count sometime last August. He perhaps that it’s nearly a year and a half. He glances at the calendar hanging on the wall. _October 5._ Oh. It’s nearly two years since, a shy of few weeks just before the turning of Halloween.

He turns at the sound of clothes rustling, feels the slight gust of wind streaming through the open window of the kitchen, hears the quiet murmurs of birds and the swaying of leaves outside. Despite the chaos brewing within his chest, he is still sleepy. Head comfortably resting on folded arms, eyes half lidded.

Something presses against the tip of his fingers. The cup was a discolored white, molded glass feathers crooked in some area. It is a familiar treasure. Something he had long hidden away.

“Good morning, Bokuto-san.” He says without preamble, hand wrapping around the cuppa. He is slighted by the amount of sugar poured into the coffee. He only pursed his lips in response—a habit out of annoyance.

“Good morning, ‘Kaashi.” Bokuto’s voice was a lot deeper than he had remembered. A sign of change catching up to this change-a-weather being. Peering gently, he breaks the silence settling between them, “How’d you been?”

The words they exchange were wrapped in the diminished coldness. They were all filtered talks, a shadow crawling right behind a raging fire. Akaashi thinks he’ll get burn if he closes in too much.

Bokuto shifted and the gleam of the ring catches his eyes.

* * *

_The dynamic of Kuroo and Kenma is something that he always admired. A tinge of him envied it. They were all stable grounds, strong foundations, memories forging stronger bond—something that he was sure Bokuto and him lacked._

_But he does not voice his bitter resentment building up within. Not unless he wanted to be abandoned again._

_He was wrapped in cotton blanket, hands holding a warm black coffee. Kuroo’s curses were heard, rattling annoyance pouring through the phone. He believed that if Kuroo said something, Bokuto would come back to his senses, would come back to him._

_But the crashing of the phone against hard wood made him flinched._

_Ah, he privately thought, tears shattering down his cheeks, he can’t make him come back, can he?_

* * *

“You kept it?” Without meaning to, the question was out his lips faster than he could regret forming the thought. Golden eyes follow his line of sight to the ring he wore, a circle of promise that he discarded whilst chasing something so abstract. Akaashi backpedals before Bokuto could answer, “I don’t mean to pry.”

It took a few minutes before the silence was broken once more. The awkwardness dispelling the bright display Bokuto was emphasizing. Akaashi almost snorts in the childishness that never left his companion.

“You did not?” The question was laid like a fork, he does not know which one to tread. He does not know if there is even a right one to walk unto. The heavy absence circling his ring finger was all the answer Bokuto could draw out.

“I lost it.” A lie. Probably. Akaashi does not remember. Weeks after Bokuto’s departure, the sinking realization that it was not a normal disappearance that they had imbued into the routine of their relationship made the suppressed fury he felt for all the times Bokuto was gone all the more raging.

He remembers broken glasses, bleeding hands, stained white clothes. He remembers his awful cries, Kuroo’s panic voice, Kenma’s quiet comfort. Somewhere between his breakdowns, he somehow lost the ring Bokuto promised him in their university days.

He waits for his response to his calm worded loss. Instead, he felt a hand caressing his bare hand.

“Would you take a walk with me?” The weather has been fair even with its chilling tendency. He sneaks a peek out of the window and decides that he could use a walk right about now.

“Let me change first.”

* * *

_He wondered what his response would be if Bokuto returns. He kept the key in its usual place and never double locked the door. He was sure that one of these days, Bokuto would come back. He always does. Their apartment has been an easy building to locate. He made sure of it._

_But Kenma coaxed him to move out somehow. It was a decision he never wanted to make. But he was pale as a ghost, thinner than bones—he was slowly losing life and he was sure that when Bokuto returns, he would be greeted by flowers and tomb._

_The dead cannot take care of people nor can they even love. He does not want to disappear. He was sure Bokuto would not like that at all. So, he moved in a house far from the bustle of Tokyo. The neighborhood is a quiet affair—a calming atmosphere that reeled him halfway back to life._

_Still, he wondered what his response would be when Bokuto returns to him._

* * *

The outside world is not as cold as he imagined it. Orange leaves littered the ground, falling like the foreshadowing of snow. The red scarf—not the black and white that Bokuto gifted him a long time ago—wrapped itself around his neck like a loose noose.

“I had gone to Brazil.” He listens to the side of Bokuto he did not bear witness to. The taller man gesticulated, a reminiscent of warmer memories that Akaashi shrugs off. The tale began to the day he landed on the foreign land—not the day he left Japan. The details of his companion’s adventure were a clear chatter, folding just beyond his reach. They were months of unoccupied thoughts of Japan, a list of people he came to meet, an excitement he breathed into life.

“And then—” The suspense lingers for a second before everything came falling at the seams, “I realized I am stupid and selfish.”

The end of the tale was not the one he would expect.

“I came back eight months after I left.”

* * *

_Kuroo once asked him, a month after transferring to another prefecture, if he still loves Bokuto. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t answer then. The tightness within his chest made a reckless confession._

_For the first time since he met Bokuto, he questioned the state of his affection he held for him. It was a mere brief moment, but it was enough to shake him into slight doubt._

* * *

“What made you think that?” Akaashi asks in a plain voice, tone so flat that he was sure Bokuto could not discern the disgusting _hope_ from it. Hope has been a poisonous weapon that kept him from ever stepping forward.

“You.”

He thinks it’s unfair. It’s not a good thing to love in spades but he does anyway. He loves and loves until he is pouring—not stopping even when absconded, even when he starts to question it. He pursed his lips, thinning into a line.

“Ten years.” He starts, his voice soft, “I gave you ten years of my life. And I was sure you would settle in, discard your penchant for adventures that leaves me behind. Instead, even when I begged, you disappeared.”

Akaashi was surprised at the calmness he possessed. He was sure he would break when he speaks more than he would let himself. The words managed to dig on both the scars their relationship accumulated—more so for the man-child.

“Yeah.” Bokuto was never good with words, “Kuroo refused to let me know where you were. Every friend we had told me to fuck off, ya know.”

“What do you think would happen if you come back?” Akaashi imagines the responses he would make when Bokuto returns. Most were angry shouting and crying. There were several vulnerable ones. The others were just cold turn-away. A few hopeful ones were hugs and kisses, like a hopeless fool who could not internalize the pain anymore.

“That you would turn me away.” The honesty in the response was subdued by the breaking of his partner’s voice. Akaashi stops in his trek, “Kuroo probably told you to fuck off time and time again before he succumbed to your persistence. Probably, he hopes that you would also be turned away when you come back. If I were even half the normal person I used to be, I would have been alarmed by the sudden intrusion in my house. Even with the threat that I am being assaulted, there is a part of me that _hope_.”

He snarls at the last word, an angry mark that left a nasty taste. The apology that left Bokuto is quiet but it held a lot more than Akaashi bears to comprehend.

“I wished you were a better person, Bokuto-san.” Gunmetal blues quiver before they look away. He ignores the silent gentle tug on his hand, ignores the arms wrapping around him, ignores the warmth spreading to the core of his being. Because he should grow cold—he should be wintry and unhappy. But because he _hopes_ , the chills that had been his companion receded like waves ebbing away.

“I’m sorry I’m the one you love.”

There is a pause in the air, a quiet longing settling in. He pinpricks his finger subtly as to not alarm his companion. The numbness spread like wildfire in him, replacing the warmth that tried to soothe him. Before he could make any other decisions that would break him even more, he responded in his quiet voice as a heavy realization sink him farther down.

“I’m sorry too.”

* * *

He blinks groggily—a sluggish action underappreciated by most. Gunmetal eyes cracks before dawn breaks, body curling into a defensive step against the cold autumn day. He ignores the clock that sat atop his drawer, eyes lazily searching for the calendar besides it. The year is 2022. It’s _October 5_ , a shy of few weeks before it turns two years since.

This is how his morning truly begins.

The side of the old bed where Bokuto used to lie remained cold. There were no arms that cage him in an almost suffocating hug the moment he blinks his eyes open. The room was as vacant as what he feels. For a moment, he deluded himself into thinking that Bokuto would open the door of his bedroom, smile at him as brightly as he always does, and tell him a love confession—a routine that they had done for almost a decade.

He holds his breath in anticipation. But the seconds tick by, rounding up into minutes. There were no signs of life nor a tail of the brightness he was familiar with. Bokuto did not come back like he used to.

 _Ah_ , he thought privately, loose tears falling like a bad habit, _he wished he did not hope anymore._

-Fin-


End file.
